Dalton entered Wednesday’s Ivy Prep League opener buoyed by recent success and future promise. The Tigers finished third last year, behind Poly Prep and Fieldston, returning much of that core, and also featured a pair of standout freshmen: catcher Jared Mandelbaum and shortstop Cal Barnett.

“This is kind of our year right now,” Dalton coach Nick Ross said on Tuesday.

It still may be, but Wednesday certainly wasn’t Dalton’s day. Failing to come through in the clutch early and falling apart defensively late, the Tigers were routed by four-time defending league champion Poly Prep, 12-1, on cold, windy and rainy Randall’s Island.

Ross eschewed the usual postgame on-field talk. Dalton (0-1, 0-1 Ivy Prep League) was back on the school bus moments after the final out was recorded.

“I spoke to the kids on the bus, I said, ‘Look, adversity builds champions. Championships are won by teams that can get back up off the mat and stick it to the next team,'” Ross said. “‘What happened today happened. There’s nothing we can do, we can’t change it. We’ll go from here. We have some work to do.”

It starts with hitting with men in scoring position. Against Poly Prep (5-1, 1-0 Ivy Prep League) sophomore hurler Philip Maldari, Dalton put 11 runners aboard in five innings. It had seven hits altogether, yet just one run – on a Barnett run-scoring groundout – to show for it. The Tigers loaded the bases with no outs in the first, only to fail to score. The first two reached in the third and Dalton loaded the bases again in the fourth. The 4-5-6 of Michael Salik, Dexter Zimet and Isaac Shapiro combined to go 0-for-10 with seven strikeouts.

“We have plenty of chances, we just couldn’t put the ball in play when we needed to,” Ross said. “You make it easy when you put the bat on your shoulder and walk to the dugout. We just couldn’t do anything. It killed us.”

Ross did take a few positives from the lopsided loss. His two freshmen starters – Mandelbaum and – combined for three hits. Despite lacking his usual lockdown stuff, Josh Jacobvitz battled for five-plus innings. Most importantly, Dalton started shaky last spring as well, getting run-ruled by Hackley only to win 10 straight.

“We have to learn from it and move forward,” Ross said. “It’s just one game. It’s not the end of the season.”